Israel must "flatten Gaza" like the US flattened Japan, says Sharon's son

A chilling article by Gilad Sharon, son of the former Israeli prime minister, in the Jerusalem Post.

Palestinians search the debris of a destroyed home following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City. Photograph: Getty Images.

If you want some indication of how extreme parts of Israeli political opinion have become, then read the chilling piece by Gilad Sharon, the son of former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, in today's Jerusalem Post.

After writing that the civilians of Gaza "are not innocent" since they elected Hamas, Sharon declares:

We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza. The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.

While Sharon's invocation of Hiroshima is shocking, he isn't the first prominent figure to make the comparison between Gaza and Japan. Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister and the leader of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu (which recently merged with Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud) said in January 2009, during the last major Israeli assault on Gaza, that Israel

must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II. Then, too, the occupation of the country was unnecessary.

His remarks were widely interpreted as a reference to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Would Israel ever consider such a solution? It sounds unthinkable, but Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed in October 2009 that Lieberman "had threatened to use nuclear weapons against Gaza" (see the final line of this Guardian report).

Further evidence of the mindset of those currently leading Israel was supplied by Eli Yishai, the country's deputy prime minister, who declared at the weekend: "The goal of the operation is to send Gaza back to the Middle Ages. Only then will Israel be calm for forty years."